Category: Technical Blog

Lightspeed Tech Support Sends Me a Web Store 2.1.1 Bug Report Confirmation

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 10:31 AM, LightSpeed Support wrote:

[edited] the information about the bug and the fix are all public information. When Web Store was converted to “open source”, we moved all the development including issue tracking to Github.com, a huge and public development site for hosting code. It includes an issue tracker where we post the bugs (or they are reported by clients), and also you can see when the item was fixed and exactly what changes were made in the code.

The issue is listed here:
https://github.com/lightspeedretail/webstore/issues/71

You can see it was posted on August 25th by Jonathan Serafini and the fix was posted that day. The technical details on the fix is located at https://github.com/lightspeedretail/webstore/commit/d93f74dd67a628b1559f261435d0c94be4d0708c

I need to clarify that fixes are put in a “beta” version of the software for further testing and then released to the public later, we never recommend running beta software on a product site. I say this to make sure [edited] doesn’t get confused that it was “fixed” on the 25th. It’s all about the release date. We modified the “release” branch yesterday, which you can see here https://github.com/lightspeedretail/webstore/branches/release and that’s my username ktwbc attached. This change along with others are part of 2.1.2 which we are releasing today.

Best regards,

Kris White
Support Specialist
[edited]

Embed Audio files for music product in LightSpeed web store

Out of the box, LightSpeed web store is not as robust as some other eCommerce solutions. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to make it more robust. One such example: creating a solution to hear music samples in a Single Product detail page on the web store. We didn’t want to just click over to an external site (like the vendor’s wholesale page which had provided the samples). In my solution the customer does not leave the page to hear them.

I created a custom post type in WordPress for each CD/album title being sold on the web store. Each post has its own music player loaded with a playlist (of song previews). The .mp3 samples were uploaded with the Media Uploader and a music player WordPress plugin called Haiku was activated to play the samples. Then the links to the single custom posts were embedded in the appropriate LightSpeed Product Cards and then web store was updated.

When the link in the product description is clicked, the custom post loads and plays the samples in a lightbox window (using Fancybox which ships with web store), so the customer never has to leave the product details page to listen before they buy. All you have to do is embed the link to the custom post type in the product description and voilà.

Theme Authors Beware: WordPress 3.2 needs MYSQL 5 and PHP 5.2.4

Like WordPress states on their WordPress 3.2 pre-release page client’s hosts need to be using MySQL 5 and at least PHP 5.2.4. There’s a plugin called Health Check that will let you know either way. I’d hurry and install this plugin because if the environment is not OK you’re going to have to login to the client’s cpanel and see if you can upgrade both or if you have to contact their host and ask them to make this an option.

The other big change is that WP 3.2 uses jQuery 1.6.1. You may be using jQuery plugins or random JavaScript functions that will not work with 1.6.1. I beat my brains out for a while before I realized that something I had written or included was the reason my custom slideshow wasn’t loading. I knew it was a Javascript error because an alert popped up instead of the slideshow and all it said was undefined. So now I have to track down what is not compatible or undefined. Yay! But I needed the site to work right now so I replaced WP’s jQuery 1.6.1 with jQuery 1.4.4 to buy some time until I can find out what is not right with my scripts. But I’m not betting much on fixing the scripts and will probably just phase out using them in new projects… too bad because some of them worked really well.

Oh I forgot to say whether replacing WordPress jQuery 1.6.1 with jQuery 1.4.4 causes anything to break. I’ve tested the Widgets and Menus manager and everything works as expected.

Revised: Add a Facebook like button to Xsilva Lightspeed Web Store

New and improved way to add a Facebook like button to the product details page template file in your Xsilva Lightspeed Web Store template. How is it new and improved? Because now we can show the product image as well as the description and link when someone likes the item and posts it to their facebook page. Thanks to Patrick from Slick Willy’s of Dunedin for asking me take the time to figure this out. I might not have bothered otherwise!

Please take care when editing your templates and make sure to keep copies of any files you edit so you can replace the edited ones if a problem occurs.

File to be edited: INDEX.TPL.PHP

On line 69 of index.tpl.php you’ll find this:

[php]<?php global $strPageTitle; ?>
<?php if (isset($strPageTitle)): ?>
<title><?= _xls_get_conf(‘STORE_NAME’, _sp(‘Shopping cart’)); ?> : <?php _p($strPageTitle); ?></title>
<?php endif; ?>[/php]

I always revise this block so that the Title of the Page, Product or Whatever comes before the Store Name. This is good for SEO.

SEO Tip: the code below can also be moved to be right underneath the meta tag for the Content-Type which is found on line 35 of index.tpl.php and looks like this: [php]<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<?= _xls_get_conf(‘ENCODING’ , ‘utf-8’) ?>" />[/php]

So, find the code block on line 69 of index.tpl.php and cut it. Then copy the following and paste it under the meta tag for the Content-Type:

[php]<?php global $strPageTitle; if (isset($strPageTitle)): ?>
<title><?php _p($strPageTitle); ?> | <?= _xls_get_conf(‘STORE_NAME’, _sp(‘Shopping cart’)); ?> </title>
<meta property="og:title" content="<?php _p($strPageTitle); ?> | <?= _xls_get_conf(‘STORE_NAME’, _sp(‘Shopping cart’)); ?> "/>
<?php endif;?>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Put Your Store Name Here"/>
<?php if( get_class( $this ) == "xlsws_product"):?>
<meta property="og:image" content="/index.php?listingimage=<?php echo ($this->prod->ImageId)?>.jpg" />
<?php endif; ?> [/php]

File to be edited:PRODUCT_DETAIL.TPL.PHP

Find this: [php]<?php $this->lblDescription->Render() ; ?>[/php]

Add this under it:

[php]<div id="fbLike">
<fb:like href="/index.php?product=<?php echo ($this->prod->Code)?>" send="false" layout="button_count" width="450" show_faces="false" font="arial"></fb:like>
</div>[/php]

Button Placement Tip: you can put the Facebook like button somewhere else – it doesn’t have to go under the product description.
CSS Style Tip: wrapping the button in a div gives you more control over padding,margin and etc.

Facebook JavaScript Connection Code
Because we don’t need to connect our like button with the Facebook API site-wide – just on the product details page where the like button is, we can put the JavaScript connection code in the product_details.tpl.php template file at the bottom of the file. Go here for the code.